We’ve visited a lot of museums on our travels – perhaps more
than the younger Pollocks might have wished – but I haven’t written much about
them.Often museums forbid
photography, and even when it’s allowed, the pictures don’t always turn out
well.But this month I’ll try to
rectify this omission by writing about a few museums we’ve seen.

The Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden was built specifically
to house the Vasa, a ship that sank in 1628 and wasn’t retrieved until
1961.

King Gustavus Adolphus commissioned this ship to head up the
fleet that was involved in the Thirty Years’ War in the Baltic region.Sweden had had success with smaller
vessels, but the king wanted a monumental ship that would strike fear into the
hearts of his enemies.And he
wanted it immediately.

From the beginning, his orders were to build the ship as big
as possible, as ornate as possible, and as quickly as possible.The Vasa was loaded with more
ammunition than any other Swedish ship of the time.Enormous sums of money were spent on decoration; for
example, nearly 500 sculptures decorated the exterior of the ship, including
renditions of lions, Roman emperors and Biblical symbols.

A stability test was ordered late in the ship’s construction.The testing was cut off shortly after
it began because they were afraid the ship would capsize.

You can see this one coming, right?

The Vasa’s maiden voyage was on August 10, 1628.A huge crowd had gathered on the shore
to watch it sail away including the king, many of the foreign dignitaries that
he hoped to impress, and hundreds of commoners who wanted to be present for the
launch.

Everything started well.There was barely a breeze as the Vasa set sail.Truly, this was a ship like no one had
seen before.

It left the protection of the harbour, and that’s when the
problems started.A gust of wind
knocked the ship off-balance.The
crew quickly reacted and righted it.Danger averted.

But a minute later, another stronger gust assailed the
Vasa.The mighty ship began to
list and a lower deck started to take on water.This caused it to list even more and, in full view of the
dazed spectators, the Vasa sank.

Unbelievably, the ship had travelled only 120 metres from
shore.Rescue ships were sent out
immediately and some crew members were rescued, but at least thirty people
died.

The Vasa stayed on the bottom of the ocean for 333
years.In the mid-twentieth
century, rescue technology was sophisticated enough to attempt a
retrieval.After years of
preparation, the ship was pulled to the surface and stored in temporary
quarters, until a new museum was designed and built in 1990.

We loved seeing the Vasa, still majestic all these years
later.In fact, we were so
impressed that the rest of my family wrote a poetic homage to it (because
that’s what our travels are all about: been there, took the photos, wrote the
limerick).

Beth, what a terrific post - I love to visit museums with the kids as well, a "must" whenever we come across an interesting exhibit. The museum you wrote about sounds wonderful and I love the "poetic homage"!

I have never heard of this ship or the museum. What an interesting story. So tragic that so many people lost their lives, but how cool that they were able to bring it up from the ocean floor and restore it.